Catching my balance.

December 2004

19 December 2004

I watched Magnolia tonight, which I vaguely remember being in the theaters, but never quite got around to seeing.

As I was watching it I kept thinking that it reminded me of Boogie Nights.
The setting (So-Cal), the weird detachment, they resemble each other
visibly, and something else.... oh right. The cast. As I watched it I
realized I was basically watching the entire Boogie Nights cast in
action, only with Tom Cruise instead of Marky Mark. Julianne Moore,
John O'Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William Macy, even Luis Guzman.

On
the one hand, the fact that I could tell it was by the same director
without having known that beforehand I suppose says something about
Paul Thomas Anderson as a director. He has a definite and visible
style. The downside is that I thought it worked well in Boogie Nights,
but not so much here.

The weird mini-stories at the
beginning.... okay. Fine. It felt forced, but I was willing to put that
aside to see where he was going. And he went for quite a while. I kept
trying to figure out how, as promised by those three vignettes at the
beginning, all of these disperate stories would tie together at the
end. But what a disappointment. Because how were they tied together?
Two ways:

# 1: Two and a half hours into the film
suddenly all of the main characters are now starring in a remake of
that REM video where everyone is stuck in traffic and starts singing
along to the song. Only instead of REM it's Aimee Mann. Look, I like
Aimee Mann as much as the next girl, and really like the soundtrack to
the film, but WTF on the music video break three-quarters of the way
through? Somebody was hitting the crack pipe or something. Very arty.
Oh please.

# 2: In the final scenes everyone is tied together by their all having witnessed a hail of bullfrogs.

A hail of bullfrogs? I sat through three hours of this for a hail of bullfrogs?
Just no. Writer's block? Put the script aside for a while. Get someone
else to colloborate. Decide not to shoot it. But a hail of bullfrogs?
What kind of silliness is this?

Oh yes, I know it was set up as
though all kinds of weird shit can happen- remember the kid who got
shot by his mother while trying to commit suicide at the beginning of
the movie? You see! The writer has set up that all kinds of weird shit can happen. which apparently lets him off the hook for writing something that makes sense. More importantly, it lets him off the hook for having to write himself out of the hole he put himself into. Look, dude, you
are the one who made the grandiose claim that this would be all about
the intertwining of these stories. If you can't do it comprehensively
you can't just pull magical mumbo jumbo out of your ass to compensate.

Furthermore,
the most interesting characters were glossed over. Philip Seymour
Hoffman as Earl Partidge's nurse was compelling. Do we ever learn
anything about him? He likes peanut butter. And he probably felt very
bad about killing the dog. But it was an accident. Linda Partridge?
What made her feelings toward Earl change? What is the story with the
kid who raps out the answer to who killed the guy in the closet?

There
were some high points. Hoffman is great as the nurse. William Macy is
painfully compelling as Quiz Kid Donnie Smith. It's just agony to watch
his scenes. John O'Reilly is great as the super earnest cop, and Alfred
Molina is hilarious as Solomon Solomon. But I was disapointed otherwise... in a I-want-those-three-hours-of-my-life-back kind of way.

16 December 2004

I walked down to the gym last night, passing the little park where
people walk their dogs along the way, and on the very spot where I've
seen many a large dog leaving his mark was a living nativity scene. I
was kind of startled- I mean, I've seen nativity scene before (in
ceramic, painted cement, straw, plastic, plastic with light bulbs
inside) , and I've see Christmas pagents before (like, in church, where
it's warm) , but I had never seen them combined. It was about 25
degrees out- not appropriate weather for swaddling clothes.

On
the way back from the gym I passed the park again and stopped briefly
to watch the people pretend to be going about their messianic business
while ignoring the sound of the generator that kept the lights going. I
guess the whole acting out the nativity without the desert or the inn
or the actual manger (well, they had a wooden frame that was hung with
bedsheets. They had tags. From Sears. Very authentic) is directly connected
to the whole faith thing . Like, hey, if you can have faith in the
existence of God, why not have suspension of disbelief for a manger
courtesy of Sears?

When I was closer to my apartment I saw a
minivan pull up and the three Magi got out. They were dressed entirely
in gold lame, and had shiny gold turbins. Seeing three grown men
dressed like tacky couch cushions get out of a minivan is an odd sight.
They then went to the ATM machine at the bank they had parked in front
of.

Which I guess is the lesson of the evening. Frankincense and
myrrh may have been all well and good two thousand years ago, but in
today's world, Jesus wants cash.

08 December 2004

I ask this because on the same day I received in the mail a catalog from Delia's that is clearly aimed at the 19 and under crowd, I also received from More Magazine
an offer for a free year of their magazine described such: "Go Girl!
introducing the one magazine that celebrates women over 40." I'm pretty
solidly between Under 19 and Over 40. Okay, closer to Over 40, but they
would have to offer many more than one year free before I'd be in their
demographic.

How does this happen? I seem to have developed
demographic schizophrenia. I am a 14 year old girl (God forbid) and a
woman of a certain age. ? I suppose I should be grateful that I haven't
started receiving offers for a free year of Guns and Ammo and GQ. But
aren't there whole industries out there that study the consumer
behavior of various demographics? They aren't always wrong-- I get
metric tons of leftie junk mail, but The National Review has contacted
me with an offer for a free year. (Praise the Lord for small mercies- I
might burst into flame). I also never recieve anything about children
or babies. Somehow those demographers have delineated the difference
between buying gifts on Babies'R'Us for all of my friends who keep
giving birth and my having given birth myself.

I have a good
idea what magazine subscriptions have prompted the avalanche of
entreaties from James Carville. But what screams middle-age? Is it the
New Yorker? Is it Newsweek? Is it the Economist? Is that a demographic
trifecta? More intriguing- what screams 14 year old? The late night
trolling of Amazon? My subscription to Interweave Knits? Or was it that
pair of novelty underpants that said "Ghetto" across the butt that were
a Christmas gift for a good friend of mine?